A/N. Okay, so I've never done this before. I'm trying to improve my writing, though, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Please read and review and let me know what you think! Oh, and I have six more chapters of this to post, but if it's not any good then I'll wait to post them until I can revise it.
Chapter One
Time off? Please. What is he going to do with a vacation? Go to some sticky, crowded beach and sit on a towel, rubbing sunscreen on his nose, wound so tightly he'd manage to clear a solid area around himself by virtue of his tenseness, his uneasiness? Right. He hates the beach, anyway. He can't go spend the week with his mother, because she's—he can't do that, anymore (dead). And other family? Hmm. Maybe he'll go hang out with his junkie of a brother. He's had a lot of practice skulking in alleyways anyway, searching for criminals or doing undercover jobs, so why not go over to the other side for real, for once? Maybe some pot would help him sleep, and he hasn't slept in—God, years, it feels like. So that's the plan, then. Go get high with his brother for a week, for his vacation.
He nearly laughs out loud, then he realizes that both Ross and Eames (Eames) are still staring at him.
"I think you need some time off more than you realize, Detective." Ross's voice comes at him, attacking, and nearly knocks him over. Eames grabs his arm to steady him and he closes his eyes, pretending that he's not here, not anywhere, lost in space and drifting off unanchored, unmoored. Untethered. "Take at least a week. Don't try to come back until you're ready."
He gives what might have been, in some lifetime, a nod, but it just feels like his head bobbing on his shoulders. Ha. Bobbing. The act of him, of Bobby—to be Bobby is to bob, bobbing—one has bobbed (past participle), one will bob, one is bobbing—"Bobby!"
Eames. He twitches himself back out of his thoughts and watches her as she runs her fingers nervously across her chin, watching him. They are back at their desks, he realizes. His desk where he sits every day and most nights watching her type away and root through files and impatiently sweep her bangs out of her face. Talk on the phone. He loves watching her talk on the phone, because she gets that little innocent smirk when she's trying to wheedle information out of people, and sometimes she'll look up at him and not—smile, exactly, but she'll have that gleam in her eyes and he has to sink back into his chair (my partner's hard on the furniture) and just watch her.
Phone. Talk on the…where's his cell?
"You should really get away for a couple of days." Eames is talking to him again, quietly, turning her back on the squad room of cops watching so it's just them, just him and her, in this insulated bubble of privacy they can sometimes create at will to block out the rest of the world.
His phone is in his pocket. He lays it on the desk, giving Eames a Look and wondering how long she's been talking, because no matter how much he—likes her, he supposes, and respects her, and admires her, how she can keep herself together so well as opposed to himself, always throwing books and knocking great stacks of files off desks and yelling pointlessly at Ross—despite all that, sometimes he's so off in his head that it takes him a minute to realize when she's talking to him.
"Yeah. Maybe I'll take a cruise or something." He nearly laughs as Eames' eyes widen, because the very idea is absurdity in itself, but he can't laugh because he can't believe his stupidity. This entire mess over Donny and he'd forgotten, briefly, about Donny. He cocks his head and nods at Eames and collects his coat before heading out to the street to take the subway home. The entire time his mind is snapping out a plan, the pieces working into place until he knows, with absolute certainty, what he will do. What he must do. He couldn't save his mother, he can't save his brother, but maybe he can salvage his last attempt at a family by helping his nephew.
He takes the subway back to his apartment and spends the rest of the day preparing and trying not to think about how, in a couple of hours, Eames (Eames) will show up at his door with (definitely) coffee and (probably) Chinese takeout, and he will tell her of his plan and she will bite her lip and look worried and ask questions and then agree to help him.
Which is nearly exactly what happens (she brings Thai).